When Bettye Williams began painting in 1981, she found that citrus harvesting was not a major subject. Drawn to working-class scenes of perseverance and honest labor, Williams adopted the citrus industry as a recurrent theme for her art. Although Williams has gone on to paint many other subjects, her scenes of citrus workers remain her most popular.

Williams has repeated the composition of Garden Grove several times, each with a different logo and theme. "In each of these paintings," says Williams, "there is always one figure that is dearer to my heart than all the others." In this particular painting, that figure is in the front left foreground. The man is sitting on an over-turned orange crate, so completely consumed by fatigue that his expression seems to say, "I can never look at another orange in my life."

Williams states that she will continue to create scenes of rural country life, preserving the integrity of hard work and simple living. "I want my art to make someone feel good. I want people to remember a time that wasn’t so hectic and chaotic, a time when the glass was being filled, instead of being drained."

[artist biography by Sydney Pettus; artist photograph by Daniel Zegiel]
Bettye Williams
A Garden Grove, 2000, acrylic on canvas